I was driving to get cash, listening to a story and missing many key parts because it was in French. In the gaps my mind would turn over certain questions. Like how will I ever?––etc. And possible responses, like when there is time. From this blurred body in what the nuns would call limbo, somewhere between living and dead. That was before zombies started having their moment. Well, flood me then, I thought, in a manner of praying. I walked back with the cash, having gone inside even though there was a drive-through with no one in it, because I do not like the feeling I have in the drive-through, low in the driver’s seat, having to reach up while the monitor face smirks down. Before me, I watched a woman crossing the street, carrying flowers. She wore something like a tracksuit, and I only saw the back of her. Her hair had no visible white but there was a certain halt to her gait, a learned care in stepping, the kind that suggests the bones are becoming more bird-like, emptying themselves of themselves. I thought: a new grandmother! I watched her with a smile, in astonishment at what must flutter in her heart as she carries them to where she is going. That such moments still happen. I started the car, returned to listening to the story. It is always a war story. I cannot remember another kind. This woman with flowers is not another kind, that’s the wonder of it. How she rushes to see the new baby. This woman who will hold the new baby, born of her daughter, and coo, hello, little one, as the sirens wail.
